June 1999 Column
INTERNET
DATABASE MINING - IS IT WORTH IT?
In this
article we are going to talk about some of our experiences mining resume
databases on major career hubs.
By
sharing our experiences, perhaps we can save you some effort/time/money and
maybe make you some money along the way. First
a brief review of a previous article on career hubs to lay a foundation for the
discussion:
Things
change quickly on the web. To
briefly review and update the information from a previous article on career
hubs, the major hubs include:
·
isjobbank.com (a combination of the
monster.com, and occ.com sites)
·
computerjobs.com (they break it down by
geography – for example, I use texas.computerjobs.com).
·
dice.com
·
hotjobs.com
·
isjobbank.com (includes technical
testing)
·
careermagazine.com
·
passportaccess.com
The
resume database decision is about whether you want to spend time searching
resumes to find the right candidate. The searching can require a significant
time investment, but many recruiters feel it is cost effective.
Lots of candidates drop their resumes into these databases and never
search job postings, so searching the resume databases is the only way to find
these resumes (also, many candidate will not post their resumes to hubs for all
to see). Career hub vendors spend
lots of money on spiders and robots and agents to search the web for resumes and
drop them into their databases so they can sell you on how many resumes are
available.
Mining
the databases of the major career hubs takes time.
Is it worth the effort? When
should you do it? Who should do it? How often should you do it?
Over the last few years I’ve trained researchers to mine the web’s
career hub resume databases, mined them myself, and had recruiters mine them.
Researchers:
The
problem with a researcher is that unless you invest some significant time up
front, they don’t understand technology and can’t read between the lines on
a resume to determine whether the candidate is a good fit for a job search.
A good researcher is invaluable if you take the time to do the training
and stay involved in their work so that you understand what they are doing and
how they are doing it. The training
extends beyond technology issues - you must find a way to make them as ruthless
with their time as you are with yours. You
must develop a process for managing the large volume of resumes that a
researcher can bring in from resume databases. Do you want junior people make initial calls on every
candidate, or do you want every candidate to receive an email to pre-qualify
them when they are added to your database?
What data do you want in your database? (A good researcher could quickly
overwhelm your data entry staff). You
also need to track the number of resumes found, interviewed, submitted to
clients, interviewed by clients, offered and hired from day one so that you know
if it is working and is cost effective. Researchers
need structure and a measure of the results of their work.
At some point you will want to know (they want to know too).
Not knowing will drive you nuts and make you feel like you have wasted
your investment and then the researcher quits or you fire them.
Do it yourself:
Wade is
mining the resume databases himself in his current job.
He designed the process, from data entry to results tracking throughout
the hiring process, and adds about 30-40 new local resumes per day to the Dallas
database from 4 career hub resume databases. Wade finds that he can move very quickly through the resumes
and select the ones most likely to be useful for current or anticipated needs of
the practice. It does take time,
particularly on Mondays. To avoid
missing recruiting time, Wade mines the resume databases from 6am to 8am daily
and then starts his regular recruiting duties.
It makes for a long day, but Wade, like many recruiters, likes to be in
control and understand what is going on in all aspects of the business and what
resumes are coming in the door.
Mark is
also responsible for personally mining the resume databases. Uses a slightly
different methodology. Whereas Wade mines the resumes for current and future
usage, Mark is normally seeking candidates that are a match for current orders
only. This methodology normally only results in anywhere between 2 and 10 new
candidates per day but they are candidates he can normally interview and submit
to client sites right away. Mark
also chooses off-hours to mine resumes as not to cut into prime time. Another
good reason to use off-hours is that the Internet traffic is down and you would
normally get better access speeds. He normally checks his boards daily so as not
to let the competition beat him out on a good candidate.
Have your recruiters
do it:
Danger
– Danger. Possibly a bad idea. Most
recruiters aren’t strong computer users, let alone web savvy.
Their lack of experience in web and the distraction of the Internet can
result in reduced recruiting fee production.
Some recruiters are power users and they will love the added dimension
that mining web resume databases brings to their work.
Don’t hinder them if they keep producing.
Wade is
one of those recruiters. His goal
is to lead the office in production every week even though he is also bringing
in all the web database resumes for 2+ hours per day.
Recruiters like Wade will go beyond the resume databases to learn
advanced internet recruiting techniques from seminars like AIRS I & II from
Intelligent Search. Recruiters
need to be on the phone making things happen, not just surfing the web.
Mark is
also computer savvy but also tries to teach his employees the finer points of
Internet resume database searching. He has done this with mixed results. Some
employees pick it up very well and go onto use the Internet as a productive and
profitable tool. Other employees never quite get it. Maybe they cannot type (you
at least have to be able to ‘hunt and peck’ at a reasonably fast rate) or
they cannot learn how to download resumes properly or they cannot learn how to
‘cut and paste’, etc., etc. etc. You may want to offer the employees the
opportunity to learn how to do this important job function but cut any losses
early if your employee cannot do this.
Results:
Wade’s
group doesn’t do any newspaper advertising, choosing to rely on Web ads,
resume databases on major career hubs, advanced Internet recruiting techniques,
job fairs, employee referrals, and cold calling/networking to find the best
candidates. So far this week
(Monday - Thursday), Wade has mined 136 resumes and an additional 25 resumes
came in as postings to web advertisements.
20 resumes have been presented to clients, and one hire has been made.
Mark’s
group is heavily involved with both resume database mining and Internet
advertising. The resources are managed and allotted based on the skills of the
individual employees. Qualified employees are given responsibility for the ad
placement, ad response follow-up and resume mining for a given service.
Ads are checked and ad responses are reviewed by management. He does not
keep statistics on resumes per placement but can say a large number of new
candidates and significant revenues can be attributed to Internet activity. Any
recruiter who is involved in any way in using our internet resources is also
trained and uses all other important recruiting methods including cold calling,
which is a part of every recruiters day at his firm.
Is it
worth it? Of course it is if you exercise the proper control over your
resources. Manage, delegate, review, act, manage more, delegate more, and act
again. In a Fordyce Letter article from earlier this year, our publisher ran the
results of a survey of HR professionals. Generally speaking, the survey stated
that although Internet recruiting activities among large corporations (our
clients) was way, way up, the level of user satisfaction had remained constant.
This means that we are still better that they are. We have taken the time to
learn how to use the Internet as a sourcing tool, as a starting point and then
have used our recruiting and marketing skills to make the deal. I can say many
times I have made a placed an Internet candidate with a client I know runs
Internet ads. Go figure. We need to remain better than they are.
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